Headlines
New heads for Indian space agency's spaceport, key units
Bengaluru, June 1
The Indian Space Research
Organisation (ISRO) got new directors for its spaceport at Sriharikota,
and the rocket design and assembling and liquid propulsion systems
centres at Thiruvananthapuram, it was announced on Monday.
"P.
Kunhikrishnan is the new director of the Satish Dhawan space centre in
Sriharikota in place of M.Y.S. Prasad, who superannuated on May 31,"
ISRO said in a statement.
Distinguished space scientist K. Sivan
is the new director for Vikram Sarabhai space centre on superannuation
of M. Chandradathan on May 30 while heavy rocket project director S.
Somnath succeeded Sivan as director of the liquid propulsion systems
centre.
Kunhikrishnan was currently deputy director at
Sriharikota, where he was "responsible for the flight certification of
all the avionics systems of launch vehicles (rockets) and head of the
quality division for devices and test and evaluation", the statement
said.
As associate project director and mission director, he was
in-charge of 13 polar satellite launch vehicles (PSLV), including PSLV
C25 that carried the country's maiden inter-planetary mission to the
Martian orbit on November 5, 2013.
As liquid propulsion systems
centre director, Sivan was the chief architect of 6D trajectory
simulation software (Sitara), backbone of the real time and non-real
time trajectory simulations of all launch vehicles, the statement said.
"Sivan
contributed significantly in setting up a parallel computing facility
and hypersonic wind tunnel facility, which has opened new avenues in
computational fluid dynamics and self-reliance in wind tunnel testing,"
it said.
He joined GSLV (geo-synchronous launch vehicle) project
in April 2011 as director and under his leadership, the heavy rocket's
indigenous cryogenic upper stage was achieved on January 5, 2014.
An
expert in launch vehicle design with specialisation in rocket
engineering, structural design, structural dynamics and pyrotechnics,
Somanath authored the project report of GSLV Mk-III during 2000-2002 and
joined the project in 2003.
"Under Somanath's leadership, the
first experimental suborbital test flight of LVM3, was accomplished on
December 18, 2014," the statement added.